Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Philhellenism

But how is it that the
world, the barbarians, contemptuous as they are contemptible, are still concerned with the existence of the
Greeks at all? Whence has the flood of their misrepresentation been unloosed? The source is found in that curious mixture of sincere and artificial enthusiasm,
Philhellenism.

The most frequent manifestations of this peculiar
mental state, both in print and life, are the outcome of
that jejune philosophy of living, which is the last
heritage of the classical scholar. Student, ultimately
interpreter, of Greek texts; endowed with a kindred
love of exact reasoning and exact representation, together with a kindred absence of historical perspective
and emotional outlet; he has fabricated from literature
and stones an ideal of humanity, which he and his
following have pronounced applicable to eternity. It
is the singular odium of this eternal comparison, for
centuries the bane of European culture, which necessitates, once and for all, the relegation of classicism to its
just place in the tale of human development.

In history alone, the paper Philhellenes may be held
responsible for as great a volume of calculated misrepresentation as the priestly editors of the Old
Testament. Fanatically jealous for their idols' prestige,
they visit the virtues of the fathers upon the twentieth-century children with a malignity so familiar that
further mention of it is unnecessary. Flouting the
rudiments of anthropology, dating a quarter of a
century back, they continue to propagate the thesis
that the ancient Greek was a Nordic giant, and that
the modern is a Slav dwarf. In face of common-sense
euphony, they persist in maintaining a pronunciation
invented by the ignorant English scholars of the sixteenth-century, which utters "bazilews" for βασιλεύς
instead of "vassilefs," "kilioy" for χίλιοι instead
of "hilii"—thus rendering moribund a language
which, after two millenniums, differs from Euripides
considerably less than modern English from Chaucer. Though aware, if pretending to culture (which they
possibly do not) that a cursive Greek hand has existed
for more than a thousand years, they still compel submissive pupils to perform their conjugations in a
disjointed and hideous script, thus dissipating the
short hours of youth, and the straitened incomes of its
progenitors, in useless effort. Finally, they range themselves in support of a cynical world's opinion that the
twentieth century Hellene is no more than a negligible
assemblage of human vices.